Invasion - Angriff der Körperfresser

INFECTION (aka: INVASION) starts out semi-promising. A cop drives down a rural road in his patrol car, recording everything on his dash cam. It seems that a meteor has hit nearby, and something strange is going on as a result.

Unfortunately, this setup lingers on and on. And on, as various people drive the same police car down the same long stretch of road!

To be fair, a couple of zombie-types do wander about, but they only last for about 10 seconds. There are few scares, and even fewer interesting plot developments. Most scenes are made up of lengthy shots of empty road with absolutely no action.

As one of the so-called "found footage" films, this movie could be used as evidence for why the entire sub-genre should be abolished...

...but that by no means makes it good or even mediocre. This doesn't rise to "complete crap" status. And that's the fascinating part: it's such a non-movie that you keep watching and waiting for something to happen so the movie can get started. But it never does. It actively avoids everything...period. I can't stress enough that isn't an exaggeration, this lack-of-a-movie avoids it's own characters and plot, even just abandoning them completely by the side of the road and goes for a long, slow drive through the countryside. Yes, that literally happens, it's actually a pretty succinct summary of the entire 70 or minute runtime.

The most interesting thing about the whole thing comes from the fact that it was made at all: who thought this was a good enough idea to make a movie? Who heard the pitch and invested real, actual money to make it happen? How can an absolute absence of story and characters and events be anything but boring? Was this just another attempt to scam the foreign video market with a fake movie made for $20 and a tank of gas?

If nothing else, "Invasion" raises a lot of questions. "Can't there be an IMDb rating BELOW 1?", for example.

This film screened at the Velvet Jones Night Club in Santa Barbara in 2005 and I still can't forget it. I have never experienced anything like this before. I don't know how Pyun pulled off such a personally harrowing experience. I felt like it was happening to me. I can only figure it must be the one-shot aspect that grabs hold, but that doesn't really capture what happens. I felt excruciating tension during this film and stayed locked into my seat after the end. You'd think I'd be talking about the story, what happened and how good the acting was, but it wasn't like a movie with actors. It was like being completely immersed within real life-threatening events. I've read some people say it's like Blair Witch, but that wasn't as all consuming and personal as "Infection". This felt like an experience I was having, not a movie and not even an event I was watching. "Infection" is a 'must see' for every movie lover and every gamer - it's a cross between the two...only better.

'What did I do to deserve this?' the lead actress wails and I can't help but wail that question alongside with her.

This movie was told through the perspective of a dashboard mounted camera in a police car, so if watching the view of headlights illuminating a dirt road in the middle of the forest for over an hour is your idea of entertainment, then this is the movie for you! The basic idea of this 'film' is sound, meteorites fall to the earth in a small town and one by one the residents are infected with some kind of alien slug thing deposited in the ear. However, you see none of this. What you do see is headlight illuminated grass with low rent sound effects playing in the background to give the illusion that something intense is going on.

I kept waiting for something to happen, and when nothing happened I kept waiting for someone to bludgeon me over the head for being so stupid as to continue watching this tripe.

If this quantifies as a film, then next time I'm stuck in motorway traffic and not moving for over an hour, I'll just film it and lay a soundtrack of machine gun fire and helicopters over the top and call myself a filmmaker.

That's right. You heard me.

Almost everything important in this movie happens off-camera. The problem with these "real-life" style horror flicks is that the presence of the camera has to be explained. The only way the makers of 'Infection' could think of to get a "real" camera into their movie was to use the dashboard camera of a police car. The problems with this choice should have been immediately apparent--the middle of a car's dashboard can't follow a principal character around. A police car can't bob and weave through buildings, can't hide in bushes, can't investigate strange sounds in an abandoned warehouse or flee to the roof and fail miserably at trying to escape via helicopter, can't do about 80% of the "required" activity in a successful zombies-are-coming-to-eat-you flick. It's just too limited. Even COPS doesn't rely ONLY on dashboard cameras. Why the makers of 'Infection' thought they could do it is beyond me. You're so desensitized to everything by the time hand-held cameras finally DO come into play toward the end, it doesn't even have an effect.

The "skipping" footage doesn't help matters. For the feed to cut out just when what IS visible starts to get good doesn't make it extra scary, it just makes it frustrating.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of "less is more." Best thing about 'Paranormal Activity?' The power of suggestion. But the power of suggestion ALONE is not enough to carry a good horror film.

Even with an "A for effort," I can only justify giving this flop three stars. Recommended only for those who can't handle the real scares in something like '*REC' or 'Paranormal Activity.'